What is Average Treatment Duration (ATD)?
Optimizing Average Handle Time (AHT) is key to improving your call center's operational efficiency and customer satisfaction. An AHT that's too long may reveal organizational inefficiencies or training needs, while one that's too short may indicate negligence in resolving customer problems.
By learning about best practices for managing and reducing LMD, you can not only increase your agents' productivity, but also deliver a superior customer experience. This article will provide you with concrete strategies and practical tips for calculating and mastering LMD to transform your contact center into a model of efficiency and quality.
Definition of Average Treatment Time
DMT represents the average time needed to manage a customer interaction from end to end. It includes several elements:
- Average Conversation Time (ACT)
- Standby (MEA)
- Post-call follow-up time, also known as After-Call Work (ACW)
This indicator is essential for improving your contact center's performance while ensuring customer satisfaction. An average processing time that is too long may indicate organizational or training problems. On the other hand, a delay that is too short may indicate partial or sloppy resolution of customer problems.
The importance of DMT
Average handling time plays an important role in your customer relationships. Analyzing AMD enables you to improve customer service quality by identifying weak points at each stage of your customer interactions and implementing strategies to correct them.
Optimized LMD means advisors handle more requests, improving productivity. And the more efficient your agents are, the more you reduce waiting times, contributing to a better customer experience.
Fast processing times can improve the customer experience, but be careful not to sacrifice service quality. Coupling DMT with your CSAT questionnaires will enable you to strike the right balance between efficiency and quality of customer experience.
In short, the continuous measurement and adjustment of DMT helps deliver a superior experience, enhancing customer satisfaction while optimizing productivity and processing costs.
How do you calculate average call center handling time?
To calculate the average handling time (AMT) in a call center, you need to add up all its components. As a reminder, the components in question include :
- Average Conversation Time (ACT) This is the time spent by the agent talking with the customer.
- Time on hold (TOW): Represents the time during which the customer is on hold, often as a result of being put on hold or passing through an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system.
- After-Call Work (ACW): The time used by the agent to finish processing the call after hanging up.
The calculation formula is as follows:
DMT = DMC + MEA + ACW
The DMT varies according to the sector of activity and the nature of the requests. It is therefore crucial to adapt your performance objectives to your customer and product/service typology.
7 tips to reduce your customer relationship center's LMD
Analyze all your calls with Speech Analytics
Speech analytics is a powerful technology that can transform the way you assess call quality(Quality Monitoring). By transcribing and analyzing every telephone conversation, you can identify trends, recurring problems and sticking points. This enables you to understand why some calls take longer than necessary to handle, and to make targeted improvements.
Offer targeted training and personalized coaching to agents
Investing in targeted training and personalized coaching for your agents is essential for optimizing average handling time in your call center. By providing training tailored to the specific needs of each agent, you can improve their skills, commitment and efficiency. This translates into faster, more efficient call handling, while maintaining a high quality of service.
From automated assessments by Speech Analytics and manual listening by supervisors, you'll be able to identify areas where everyone can improve. Use this information to create customized training programs that meet their specific needs. At the same time, set up personalized coaching sessions to offer ongoing support and practical advice.
Automate repetitive tasks
Routine administrative tasks, such as updating customer files, sending follow-up emails or entering data, can consume precious time that your agents could be devoting to more complex, value-added interactions.
To implement automation, first identify repetitive tasks that can be automated without compromising service quality. Use tools and software designed to automate these processes, such as customer relationship management (CRM) systems with built-in automation features.
By reducing the time spent on these tasks, your agents will be able to focus on resolving customer issues quickly and efficiently, helping to reduce LMD and improve the overall customer experience.
Simplify and standardize internal processes
Complex, non-standardized processes can lead to inefficiencies, errors and extended handling times. By streamlining these processes, you can improve the fluidity of operations and enable your agents to handle calls faster and more efficiently.
Start by mapping your current processes to identify redundant or unnecessary steps. Then work to simplify them by removing obstacles and automating steps where possible. Standardize procedures so that all agents follow the same steps when handling calls. This reduces variation and ensures a consistent, efficient approach.
By making processes simpler and more uniform, you'll help your agents navigate their daily tasks more easily, helping to reduce LMD and deliver a better customer experience.
Optimize your inbound and outbound call scripts
Well-designed scripts enable your agents to handle calls more smoothly and efficiently, while ensuring that essential information is communicated clearly and quickly.
To optimize your scripts, start by analyzing existing conversations to identify where calls tend to grow unnecessarily long. Simplify and clarify messages by eliminating redundant information and structuring scripts logically. Include ready answers to frequently asked questions and smooth transitions to guide agents through the call. Finally, test scripts regularly with your agents and adjust them according to their feedback and performance data.
Set up a common knowledge base available to agents
A well-organized knowledge base gives your agents quick access to accurate, up-to-date information, helping them to answer customer queries faster and more efficiently.
To create an effective knowledge base, start by gathering all relevant information, such as FAQs, procedure guides, response scripts and solutions to common problems. Organize this information in an intuitive, easy-to-navigate way. Make sure the knowledge base is regularly updated to reflect the latest information and procedures. You can also encourage agents to document new solutions found to recurring problems to enrich this common knowledge base.
By providing your agents with rapid access to a centralized resource, you reduce the time they spend searching for information, helping to reduce LMD and improve customer service quality.
